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November 3 - November 13, 2012
Your doctor spent 5 minutes? Downtown Express photo by Sam Spokony
National Guardsmen unload boxes of FEMA-supplied rations outside Smith Houses, where hundreds of desperate locals had swarmed on Thursday night to get much-needed food and water.
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Better late than never, as National Guard delivers food Downtown Continued from page 1
tated until the trucks finally arrived around 6:15 p.m. Despite many harsh words over the lateness of that arrival, the residents certainly appreciated the vital supplies, as their neighborhood continues to sit in darkness. “We would’ve gone crazy if they didn’t come,” said Tony Chan, 40, who came with his family several blocks from their home on Mott St. to pick up a box full of food and water bottles. Chan explained that, even though other problems still loom large, the rations provided an important lifeline to people like himself, who simply hadn’t been ready for such a difficult aftermath to the storm. Before the delivery, he had no food or water. “The only thing we could’ve eaten was a rat,” Chan joked, as he walked home. Governor Andrew Cuomo had originally mobilized the National Guard on Oct. 28, the day before the hurricane struck. And on Thursday morning, at the behest of local politicians, Cuomo announced the Guard would be delivering one million meals — supplied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency — to Downtown Manhattan and affected areas in Brooklyn and Queens. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and State Senator Daniel Squadron, both of whom were part of a group that urged the governor to implement the deliveries, were outside Smith Houses on Thursday night with their aides to help oversee the arrival hand out the rations. Although the crowd of hungry residents never became mob-like, the scene was somewhat frantic, as dozens of Guardsmen rushed to stack hundreds of cases of water bottles and sealed boxes of emergency meals. Silver noted that, in terms of a potentially life-saving delivery, it was better late than never. “It’s unfortunate that it isn’t taking place quite when they expected it to, but the need is being met,” Silver said. “This is just what happens when people are making decisions and trying to find answers in real time.”
The speaker added that, shortly after the National Guard arrived, he called the governor to say that the timeliness of deliveries would have to improve over the next few days. According to an onsite member of the Salvation Army, which is helping to coordinate the shipments of the FEMA rations, the Guard will continue the deliveries at about 15 sites throughout the aforementioned areas until Sunday. “I said to [Cuomo] that we’ve got to beef up the distribution process, because there were people here waiting for hours,” Silver said. “He told me that the sites were actually chosen by the city, and not his office. But it’s not about blaming anyone, because we’re all in this together. At this point we just need to make sure that people get what they need, because these are trying times for everybody.” They were especially trying times for the many Chinatown residents who were left disappointed, and perhaps still hungry, by the National Guard’s late arrival on Thursday. A drop-off similar to the one at Smith Houses was scheduled to take place outside Confucius Plaza, on Bowery between Canal and Division Sts., at 1 p.m. that day. But the arrival was reportedly rescheduled to 3 p.m., and then, after hours of miscommunication and speculation, the Guard did not arrive in time to actually hand out rations. The delivery was in fact made to Confucius Plaza after the Guard finished its work at Smith Houses, but since it was already dark at that point — past 7:30 p.m. — the food and water was reportedly put into storage at the Chinatown building, so it could be handed out the following day. It wasn’t only residents of the 44-story Confucius Plaza complex who were left wanting by the Guard’s failure to reach the building in time — as with the Smith site, residents from around the neighborhood showed up, many carrying a visible sense of desperation. “We have nothing,” said a 24-year-old woman named Shatima, who has lived her entire life in the Baruch Houses projects, on Delancey and Columbia Sts., and declined to Continued on page 31